Dream d3384-s: Ash Gone White

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the crow called before I reached the step, and the sound came down the hill like a word that had been set out to wait.

The notebook was in my coat, its spine against my ribs. I had carried it six nights without opening it. It had weight the way a letter has weight when you do not know the name inside.

Lano moved ahead of me on the path, her nose low, stopping at the place where the forge-door had stood until the hinges gave. She looked into the dark opening, then looked back at me.

The fire pit was cold. Not recently cold - the kind of cold that has finished arguing with warmth. The ash had gone white at the surface and darker below, and someone had set three stones around the edge as a record of the shape it had held. The clerk stood at the corner post with a small book of her own, writing the date across the top of a new page, then the crow - she noted it on the ridge beam without looking up from the line - then the condition of the pit. She wrote as someone writes who has been writing the same things in the same column for a long time, and the sameness is the point.

Ironbridge held itself the way iron holds: not announcing, just present, carrying load.

I sat on the step and rested the notebook against my knee. Lano came and pressed her flank to my shin and watched the bridge, her ears easy. The river kept its sound below us. Three people crossed. They did not look up at the smithy. The smithy did not ask them to.

The keeper came through the back passage with a length of rod over one shoulder. He set it against the wall, looked at the cold pit, looked at the clerk. She turned a page. He went back through.

The crow shifted and called once. The notebook stayed closed.

This was the sixth night. One more remained. The place went on as places go on when they have been going on longer than the current witness can measure - not ignoring the witness, not performing for the witness, simply continuing the column.

Lano's tail moved once, slow.

I stood when the clerk closed her book. She tucked it into her coat and walked toward the bridge without looking back. The crow lifted and went south. The cold pit stayed cold. I carried the notebook down the hill the way you carry something that will find its reader before you find it out.

`pixel art a human figure at a smithy step, The clerk records the crow and the date and the cold fire pit., muted moss and umber, warm amber accents, 8-bit style`

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